Tara B. drew my attention to a New York Times article on economic mobility in the U.S. and Europe. This chart compares intergenerational mobility in the U.S. and Denmark, showing where men raised in each quintile of the population (based on income) end up as adults (lighter bars = Denmark, dark bars = U.S.):

For both countries, there is more movement in the middle of the income distribution than at the extremes. However, there are important differences. As we see, in the U.S. men whose dads were in the bottom fifth in terms of income are much more likely to remain in the bottom earnings tier than men in Denmark are, with over 42% experiencing no mobility. We also see that they are less likely to move to the highest levels of the income ladder than are their Danish equivalents. However, this is partially due to differences in the overall distribution in income; because there is more income inequality in the U.S., an individual would have to gain much more income to make it from the lowest to the highest quintile than would someone living in Denmark, where the income distribution is more compact.

The full article from which this data is drawn, “American Exceptionalism in a New Light: A Comparison of Intergenerational Earnings Mobility in the Nordic Countries, the United Kingdom and the United States,” is available for free here.

Cross-posted at Jezebel.

Yesterday I posted about U.S. immigration trends, updated through 2010. Following up on that, Dolores R. found another immigration-related post by KPCC…this time, a look at the wait time to get a family-sponsored immigration visa. With the removal of strict, racialized quotas in 1965, the U.S. turned to a policy based on a set of priorities for deciding who would be granted a visa; among the various categories was a preference for those who had sponsoring relatives already living in the U.S., with different visas and priorities based on family relationship:

• F1 = unmarried adult children of U.S. citizens
• F2A = spouses and children (under age 21) of permanent residents
• F2B = unmarried adult children of permanent residents
• F3 = married adult children of U.S. citizens
• F4 = siblings of adult U.S. citizens

According to the U.S. State Department, the annual minimum family-reunification visa target is 226,000 (note that this excludes spouses, parents, and minor children of U.S. citizens, who are highest priority for immigration and are exempt from immigration caps). The Immigration and Naturalization Act requires that family-sponsorsed (as well as employer-sponsored) visas be granted in the order that eligible potential immigrants applied. Unsurprisingly, many years there are more eligible applicants than there are available visas, leading to a backlog of individuals who qualify to immigrate but are waiting for a visa to become available. In particular, China, Mexico, India, and the Philippines are “oversubscribed,” meaning there is a significant backlog.

How long? The table below shows the cut-0ff date for visa applicants in each category as of January 2012. That is, the dates given here are the date by which a person had to apply to finally have a visa available this month; the 2nd column shows for all areas excluding the four countries singled out because of their particularly long wait times:

The least oversubscribed visa category is the F2A, where those now receiving visas will have waited a bit under 3 years. But look at some of the other dates listed. For F1, F2B, and F3 visas from Mexico, the people now at the head of the line have been waiting nearly two decades, having applied in 1992 or early 1993. F4 applicants from the Philippines have been waiting almost a quarter century, since 1988.

This is part of the reason why undocumented immigration continues, and arguments about fairness and waiting their turn in line may not be particularly compelling to individuals who want to reunite with family members in the U.S. Waiting a year, or two, or five, may seem reasonable. If you learn there’s a 20-year wait, the cost/benefit analysis of whether to wait for the visa to come through or to find other means may shift significantly, regardless of how otherwise law-abiding a person might be.

Dolores R. let us know that the Migration Policy Institute has a bunch of updated data and charts/graphs illustrating immigration trends in the U.S. through 2010 (via the KPCC website). So, in 2010, where did immigrants to the U.S. come from? As you may expect, the single largest source of immigrants was Mexico:

Looking at the region of birth of immigrants in the U.S. (in millions) over time reveals clear patterns:

Notice the shift over time, with fewer immigrants coming from Europe (red) but a major increase in the number of immigrants from Asian and Latin America (green and light blue), noticeable already by 1980. This reflects changes to U.S. immigration policy in 1965 that got rid of the old quota system that openly favored northern and western Europeans. The result was a major change in the demographics of U.S. immigrants.

As of 2010, immigrants made up about 13% of the total U.S. population — the highest level in decades, but still not at the all-time high levels seen at several points in the late 1800s/early 1900s:

Lots more data at the MPI website, including a map where you can get very detailed information about the foreign-born population for each state. You might also want to check out our posts on U.S. immigration and geographic names, an interactive map of immigrant settlement patterns, English acquisition among U.S. immigrants, and a map of concentrations of speakers of various languages in the U.S.

Shamus Khan brought my attention to an interesting image posted at La Course vers la Maison-Blanche, a French-language blog about U.S. politics. The image (in English) shows where U.S. troops are stationed around the world, at bases that vary widely in size and permanence.

Not surprisingly, with the U.S. engaged in two wars (until the official announced end of U.S. involvement in Iraq at the end of 2011), during the 2000s the percent of all U.S. troops stationed in other countries has been at its highest levels since the end of the Vietnam War (though we also see an uptick in 1990, corresponding with the Gulf War against Iraq, and then a significant reduction during the ’90s):

Total number of troops stationed in other countries:

So where are these troops? Scattered on every continent except Antarctica, with concentrations in Europe, South Korea and Japan, and the Middle East,though the map in Iraq would presumably look different now):

Enlargeable image available here, with detailed descriptions of the U.S. military presence in various countries.

For the last week of December, we’re re-posting some of our favorite posts from 2011.

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In her article “Japanese Mothers and Obentos: The Lunch-Box as Ideological State Apparatus,” Anne Allison discussed the meaning of obentos. The Japanese educational system is highly centralized, with the national Ministry of Education determining the curriculum and approving textbooks. Nursery school, though overseen by the Ministry, is generally private and isn’t compulsory, though attendance is high. According to Allison, it functions much like kindergarten in the U.S., focusing less on content than on how to be a student. Of particular importance are the ability to transition from home life to the public sphere of a bureaucratic state institution and socialization into norms of group life, including cooperation and emphasis on the collective rather than the individual.

The obento was seen as an important element of this process. It was a token of home, and more specifically, of mom. The willingness to make elaborate, creative obentos was used as a measure of a woman’s commitment to the mothering role. The lunches, as you can imagine from the photos, could be very time- and labor-intensive to make. During her time in Japan, Allison says she and the mothers she talked to spent 20-45 minutes each morning on a single obento, in addition to the time spent planning and shopping for ingredients. Tips for making obentos were a frequent topic of conversation among moms, and whole magazines were devoted to the topic. Stores sell a range of obento items, including containers, decorations, molds and stamps to cut foods into various shapes, and, increasingly, pre-made food:

Nursery schools carefully oversaw lunch. The entire obento must be eaten, and everyone had to wait until every child had finished — an important lesson in the importance of the group over the individual. Thus, part of the mother’s job was to make the food appealing and easy to consume, in an effort to encourage her child to eat and avoid the embarrassment of holding up the rest of the class from after-lunch recess. Making food brightly-colored, in various shapes, and in small portions helped with this process. If a child failed to eat the entire lunch, or ate slowly, both the child and mother were held accountable. More than just a lunch, then, Allison argues that obentos served as a form of socialization into ideas of what it meant to be Japanese, particularly the emphasis on the collective and the importance of meeting expectations. Indeed, her son’s teacher viewed him as successfully assimilating to Japan not when he learned the language or made friends, but when he began routinely finishing his obento.

Talking to Japanese mothers — and making obentos for her own young son — Allison found that designing obentos was often viewed as a creative outlet, a way to express themselves and their love for their child. The small group she spoke with generally described it as a fulfilling part of motherhood. But the stakes were also high, since making a sub-par or merely utilitarian obento could stigmatize them as bad mothers. The quality of a mother’s obento became a symbol of the quality of her mothering and her commitment to her child’s educational success.

Of course, this served to institutionalize a form of intensive mothering that is difficult to balance with work life or outside interests. The women she spoke to generally could not hold even part-time jobs and fulfill the expectations placed upon them; those who did often tried to keep it secret to avoid negative judgment from their child’s teacher. In fact, a 2007 Japan Today article said that 70% of Japanese women leave the paid labor force when they have a child.

Allison’s article was published in 1991. I’d love to hear from readers with more recent experiences with expectations surrounding obentos in Japan.

UPDATE: As I had hoped, some of our readers have some great insights about obentos, including questioning whether the really elaborate obentos are most common among wealthier families while most make do with less intricate versions that don’t require as much commitment to intensive mothering. Be sure and check out the comments!

[Full cite: Anne Allison. 1991. “Japanese Mothers and Obentos: The Lunch-Box as Ideological State Apparatus.” Anthropological Quarterly 64(4): 195-208.]

For the last week of December, we’re re-posting some of our favorite posts from 2011.

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Last week Lisa posted about the racist “Asians in the Library” video from UCLA student Alexandra Wallace, and how the responses to it have often drawn on very sexist, demeaning language, as though the only way we know to combat one type of stereotyping or prejudice is to use another. Yuki T. send in a video response by slam poet Beau Sia that, as Yuki says, “stands out as a real examination of the white privilege and fear that underlies the racism that Alexandra Wallace displays,” rather than just trying to degrade or mock Alexandra in whatever way possible:

UPDATE: I found a transcript at dandelionchild, via Common Pitfalls of the Amateur Poet, though it appears the first place the transcript was posted was Madame Thursday. It’s after the jump. Thanks for reminding me, WellWheeled!

Transcript:

Didn’t you hear me say that I’m not politically correct? I said that, but you’ve all been misinterpreting me so let me be clear. There are hordes of Asians at my school and it’s starting to freak me out. They act in a manner I wasn’t taught growing up and I don’t want to question who I am and how I was raised so they are starting to be a real problem for me. I don’t understand their language, their culture, the way they hold family sacred and shared and instead of consider whether or not that is threatening to me, I’d rather the things they do, the people they are be wrong.

It’s so hard maintaining fitting in when these Asian people clearly aren’t. They’re so not the TV I’ve seen, so not the stories I’ve read, so not my experience where I’m from, and I’m letting their existence jeopardize my idea of the world and I don’t like it.

And I’m not afraid to personally address those who’s behavior is affecting me so. I’m just choosing to find solidarity in my beliefs on the internet to prevent the course of questioning my statements would cause me. If someone directed similar comments towards whom I’ve had to represent in my life.

I don’t want to have to consider why I’ve based my observations on a number of Asians smaller than some Asian families. Or what exceptions I’d have to consider if I didn’t use blanket assumptions. Or if there’s a conflict about the world changing that I don’t want to face, because of the face I was born with. There are so many more important things in my life. I don’t want to have to explore my relationship to everything around me.

And there are many who think the way that I do. And, you know, from what I know of America, these Asian people are not supposed to be this way. And I’m not talking about the laws of this country. Requirements for citizenship or taxes paid in full. Nnn-nn!

I am talking about what I’ve been programmed to think family is. How manners prove native, who should decide how identity must conform, for whom identity must conform, and why identity must conform. If only these Asians would learn English! If only they understood. That I’m here too. That I share this place with them. That I belong here. That the hordes and swarms invading the system I’ve learned remember who I am as the world changes. I’m so afraid I’ll have to fend for myself. Without what I’ve been told was mine.

For the last week of December, we’re re-posting some of our favorite posts from 2011. Originally cross-posted at Jezebel and Owni.

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A few years ago my mom took a short-term nursing job at a hospital in the Sacramento area. This was a huge deal for her. She had never been to California, hadn’t lived outside of our rural area of Oklahoma since she divorced my dad when I was a baby, and had never worked at a “big city” hospital. She feared she wouldn’t be able to make it, that her rural hospital experience just wouldn’t translate.  There were a lot of firsts for her, but it went well and the hospital administration told her they’d be happy to have her back. She was incredibly proud of herself, both for doing a good job and for being able to survive in California, a location trumped in the Big Scary Places sweepstakes only by New York City. It was an enormous confidence builder: she could leave her small town and she could make friends and keep a job.

And then, a few days before she was set to leave, she called me. Some of the staff had a little informal going-away party for her, and she was baffled by the card they’d all signed for her. It featured Jeff Foxworthy, the comic who made a name with his “You might be a redneck if…” schtick in the ’90s. The joke on the card was something about being a redneck if you used Hefty trash bags for luggage. But why, my mom asked hesitantly, would they give that to her? She’d never told them she liked Jeff Foxworthy; what made them think she’d want a card with him on it? And finally, in a plaintive voice that still just breaks my heart when I remember it, she asked me if it was possible they were implying she is a redneck, and that the people she thought were her friends were laughing at her.

Of course they did, and were. That doesn’t mean they didn’t genuinely like her or didn’t think she’s an excellent nurse, or that they meant to be hurtful; they probably assumed she’d get the joke, what with her accent, unusual colloquialisms, and openly-expressed awe and  complete lack of irony or cynicism. But in fact, the idea that her new friends might view her as a redneck or a hick was a shock. She didn’t know what she might have done that would make other people think she’s a redneck. And I could tell she was terrified — afraid that instead of “making it” in California, she was actually a joke, and too clueless to know it.

I lied to her. I said I was sure it wasn’t anything specific to her, but was just because she was from Oklahoma, and Jeff Foxworthy is from the South, so they probably just thought everybody in the South or South-adjacent region likes him. I knew it would break her heart and totally destroy her new-found confidence to think that to a lot of people, she represented stereotypes of backward rednecks, not the hard-working medical professional she’d been working so hard to portray herself as.

I thought of that experience when I saw this postcard from Post Secret:

I’ve built up a lot more cultural capital than my mom, going to grad school and being socialized into the norms of academia. I mostly eradicated my accent when I was an undergrad, I figured out that Velveeta cheese was not an acceptable addition to a cheese plate at an upper-middle-class dinner party, and I learned that most people don’t view skunks, squirrels, opossums, or raccoons as animals you might potentially turn into pets, if you’re brave and really dedicated.

I don’t feel ashamed of my background any more, because I’ve achieved enough proof of upper-middle-class success — a Ph.D., a tenure-track job, the knowledge that Brie is fancy cheese and not, as my grandma thought upon seeing it for the first time, fish bait — and some useful theories, like the idea of cultural capital, to help me make sense of what’s going on.

But I recognize the sentiment expressed in the postcard — the ever-present possibility that you’ll un-self-consciously mention something from your childhood and be met with gleefully horrified looks and giggles, and not know what’s so funny about shrugging and off-handedly saying, “I don’t know if I really need to see a movie about it, I’ve watched my relatives do it tons of times” when someone suggests watching the documentary Okie Noodling. It’s an extra little mental effort you have to expend as you navigate social encounters, trying to imagine whether something as small as honestly answering a simple question like what was your favorite food when you were a kid might open you up to ridicule. It’s not really the laughing itself, which is often good-natured and comes from people who do honestly like you, that’s so bothersome; it’s the realization that you still don’t know the cultural rules, and thus can’t necessarily protect yourself from being laughed at even if you wanted to — or in my mom’s case, that you don’t know what it is you’re doing that makes you a redneck in other people’s eyes.

For the last week of December, we’re re-posting some of our favorite posts from 2011.

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In Sway: The Irresistible Pull of Irrational Behavior, Ori and Rom Brafman discuss a contestant on Qui Veut Gagner des Millions?, the French version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?, who asks the audience for help with the question, “Which of these revolves around the Earth?” His options are the sun, the moon, Venus, and Mars. While it might be surprising that he doesn’t know, more shocking is the result of the audience poll — 56% say the sun:

How can we explain this? The easiest answer, and the video’s title, is that French people appear to be stupid, or were never informed about the Copernican Revolution. But the Brafmans have an explanation based on different cultural attitudes toward reality shows and, ultimately, ideas about fairness.

The general outlines of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? are the same regardless of country. But distinct cultural patterns have emerged in how audiences act when asked for help. In the U.S., contestants can count on the audience’s goodwill; regardless of the question asked, audiences appear to do their best to help contestants out and the Brafmans report that data shows the audience is right over 90% of the time. I must admit it had never occurred to me that audiences would do anything other than try to be helpful. Though I don’t watch game shows now, as a kid I regularly watched The Price Is Right, among others, with my family, and we always inherently rooted for the contestant, cringing if they seemed to make a bad choice and rejoicing if they won big. We truly wanted these complete strangers to win.

But not all national audiences are so cooperative. When the show was introduced in Russia, contestants quickly learned to be wary of asking the audience for help because Russian audiences frequently mislead them, intentionally giving the wrong answer. It doesn’t seem to have anything to do with the players or the questions they ask for help on.

In France, audiences seem to fall in the middle. They don’t regularly attempt to trick players, as Russian (and according to my googling, Ukrainian) audiences do. But unlike U.S. audiences, they don’t seem willing to help under any circumstances, either. They appear to intentionally give the wrong answer if the contestant asks for help on a question the audience perceives as too easy. If they think the player ought to know the answer they give the wrong response, apparently thinking the contestant deserves to lose if they’re so stupid. In the video you can hear audience laughter when Henri decides to go with the results of the audience poll.

Ori and Rom Brafman suggest this relates to notions of fairness, which have been shown to vary widely by culture. They say that in the U.S., we think it’s fair for people to win large sums of money even if they seem dumb, while in France, there is more concern about whether the individual deserves to win. They consulted historians of Russian society who suggest audience behavior there results from a general mistrust of those who gain sudden wealth. However, they provide no data to directly connect the audience members’ intentional wrong answers to cultural perceptions of fairness more broadly, so I’m somewhat hesitant about this theoretical leap. If you’re an enterprising grad student looking for a dissertation topic, perhaps you can take this project on and get back to me with your results.

But I think this topic is also interesting for the way it highlights the intersection of globalization and local cultures. Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?, like other reality shows such as the various varieties of Idol, are international franchises (Millionaire is owned by Sony), designed to be easily transferable to and implemented in many countries with the same basic blueprint — simply add local talent and you’ve got a successful TV show. But as the variation in Millionaire shows, differences inevitably creep in as a global product or process is used or interpreted on the local level, sometimes in superficial ways but other times to a degree that significantly alters the original product.

Thanks to Kelly V. for the tip about the book!